But at a press conference this afternoon, a visibly annoyed Mr Albanese described three meetings he had convened with Mr Joyce, union boss Tony Sheldon and himself, where "at no stage" did Mr Joyce say Qantas would initiate a lockout and grounding.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she did not accept that Qantas's only choice on Saturday was "to take the extreme action" of grounding all planes and "leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded".

She also denied newspaper reports that Mr Joyce had attempted to contact her before grounding aircraft.

"That is untrue and Mr Joyce has confirmed today that that is untrue," she told a press conference.

Mr Albanese went through a detailed timeline of telephone calls between himself and Qantas in which he rang Mr Joyce three times on Saturday after one of his staff had been alerted of the impending action.

He said it was only when Mr Joyce finally rang back that he got an indication the Qantas fleet would be grounded.

"That was the first occasion in which Mr Joyce or anyone else from Qantas had ever raised the issue of a lockout," Mr Albanese told reporters.

He said when he heard Mr Joyce make his claims on radio about warning the Government of a lockout he rang the Qantas boss, who then agreed the warning was never made.

"He will confirm that at no stage did Qantas, Mr Joyce or anyone else raise with me the possibility of a lockout of the Qantas workforce until we had that conversation (Saturday) afternoon," Mr Albanese said.

Mr Albanese indicated both the company and the union should grow up and negotiate their way through the pay and conditions dispute.

"If both parties, both the employer in Qantas and the employees act like adults they can certainly get this done."

If both parties, both the employer in Qantas and the employees act like adults they can certainly get this done.

Transport Minister Anthony Albanese

Ms Gillard said she was in the process of speaking to all the participants in the dispute and had "made it very clear to them that my expectation now that industrial action has ceased that they will get around a table and get this sorted".

The parties have 21 days to come to an agreement or Fair Work Australia will make a decision for them.

The first flights will resume this afternoon and full services are likely to be resumed by Wednesday.

Mr Albanese said CASA had to assess the serviceability of aircraft and oversee the resumption of services.

Question Time

"CASA believes that Qantas passenger flights will commence around about 3pm this afternoon," Mr Albanese said.

"The first priority has been Sydney to Melbourne because it is on that route that there are most stranded passengers at the present time.

"The department and CASA estimate that Qantas will not be at full operation until Wednesday.

"It's also the case that Virgin Australia will be providing an additional 3,000 seats today. Virgin have moved over 75,000 [passengers] domestically and internationally between 5pm Saturday and midnight last night."

So far Mr Joyce has not publicly responded to Mr Albanese.

And the dispute has seen the Government and Opposition trade blows in Question Time.

Ms Gillard accused the Opposition of wanting the dispute to drag on so it softened the ground for a return to WorkChoices.

But Opposition Leader Tony Abbott fired back, maintaining Ms Gillard should have directly intervened and made a personal plea once she knew the grounding was imminent.

"Why didn't you just pick up the phone to Alan Joyce and ask him not to ground the fleet?" Mr Abbott said.

The Prime Minister says that would not have worked and direction intervention could have led to lengthy legal action.

It's a fundamental human yearning to be a part of something bigger than one's self, and maybe that's what drove my mate Ash to die, far from home, in a bloody foreign war against Islamic State, writes C August Elliott.